oihfedfhorigiojisdeffandomcom-20200214-history
Jshfpvrn v
Where did you get the idea that a parent-child relationship is not hard work? If you have only experienced that as a child and think it was not hard work you must have had wonderful parents. You need to thank them. The parent-child relationship is a lot of hard work for the parent. Your mother didn't get a whole lot of sleep the first year of your life, and some parent had to follow you around for the next several years to make sure you didn't harm yourself or others or destroy something of value. I care for a 20-month old granddaughter four days a week, and the only time I'm not working is when she's taking a nap. Don't confuse hard work with distasteful work. A person can work extremely hard at something he or she likes to do -- and enjoy it! I enjoy my time with my granddaughters just as I enjoyed my time with my sons when we were raising them. But it can be work. Let me put it this way: If you are not working at your marriage, you're just roommates who also have sex. Or you're a child who never grew up, being cared for by a spouse who did. Marriage is melding two separate personalities into a lifelong partnership. That takes compromise. *That may mean Sunday dinner with your spouse's family, whom you really don't like. That's work. *It may mean doing certain chores that someone else always did at your home of origin. *It almost always means figuring out how to stretch your money to cover essentials before spending it on other stuff. Needs before wants. *It sometimes means taking a job you don't want and don't even like -- as I did for several years in the middle of my marriage -- in order to feed your family. *Or taking a part time job to help out. *It means spending a lot of time with, thinking about, and worrying over the kids produced by the marriage. That's a lot of work. *It means caring for your spouse or your kids when they are ill. *It means comforting each other in times of tragedy. *It means sticking it out when things get tough. It's a lot harder to stay and work to make things better than to run away and wash your hands of the marriage and everything about it. *It means living the pain of fighting with the person you love the most in the world, and then figuring out how to get over that and help your partner get over it. *It may mean having a relative move in with you when it is damn inconvenient, because they have nowhere else to go. And you do these things because you value your marriage and the family you and your partner have produced above everything else. So you work at it to make it good. It also means relishing the good times, savoring the moment, enjoying the happiness as a reward for all that hard work. It's worth it. My spouse and I celebrated our 56th wedding anniversary last month -- at home, watching a movie and consuming cookies and a bottle of sparkling wine for dinner. I wouldn't have it any other way.